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Tuesday, April 19, 2011

Whose Vote Counts?

I recently read a comment along the lines that if a book sells well, that doesn't mean it is a good book. Some awful books sell well, while "brilliant" books flounder in obscurity. One commentor to my recent column on Grasping for the Wind mentions that because a book sells well isn't a measure of how well it is written. That comment has been rattling around in my brain. I know what they are saying, and on a certain level, it is true, but there is something inherently wrong about that statement as well. Let me see if I can pin down what it is.

First, allow me to agree with what I think is the gist of his comment. There are poorly written books that sell well. But I would also suggest that there was something about those books that people liked. And really, that truth gets to the heart of what I'm about to say.

From the moment a person starts seeking  out help to learn to write, he or she encounters a lot of rules. Especially if you join a critique group, you'll hear axioms like, "show, don't tell," or "stay in one point of view per chapter or scene," and a whole host of them we could quote if we wanted to take the disk space to do so. If you're a writer, insert your own favorites in here.

My favorite is after pointing out some flaw in a story, the critiquer says something along the lines, "Readers will drop your book like a hot, flaming, stick of dynamite if you don't fix this problem." Like, they really know what readers will and won't like. If they knew that, they would be a famous editor at a big publishing house with a record for picking best sellers 80%+ of the time.

But we know the rules. Many of us break them, either on purpose or unintentionally. And despite that, sometimes those flawed pieces of work sell, sometimes very good, and people will love it, despite the flawed writing. I know personally there are times I hear people praising some movie or book, but when I watch or read it, I wonder what on earth all the fuss was about? Boring.

Mike Duran has recently run into this phenomenon as well. On his blog, he reviews the Christian romance novel, Redeeming Love. He was less than impressed, noting several flaws, and wondered why so many women loved it so much.

Here are some points I think we need remember in order to keep this in perspective.

One, rules are a means to an end, not the end themselves. Many writers are treating the rules of writing much like the Pharisees treated the Mosaic Law: obey or else you are a sinner! Stone him/her!

Writing rules are designed to do one thing, share wisdom with other writers on what tends to work in order to write an entertaining story that will...wait for it...cause people to read the book. Yes, that's right. The whole point of well-written prose, interesting characters, having a character arc, a plot arc, and all the other myriad of writing rules that we could toss out, is to give our books the best chance of getting read and enjoyed to the extent that they tell others about the great book they found.

If the whole point of writing is simply to be the best rule-follower you can be, to awe other writers with spotless prose, then I'm out of here. I don't want someone's main comment about my book to be, "Well, he wrote a very polished story, poetic prose that would turn Hemingway green with envy, but it was boring and dull." Not to say there aren't people out there who might say the last part, but I'm not writing simply to check off a list of rules all the other writers out there think I should be checking off. I'm writing to entertain people and hopefully communicate a bit of myself in the process.

Once the rules become the dominating reason to write, then I think the writer has lost his/her focus and goal. Unless your goal really is to write a technically perfect piece whether it ever gets read or not. More power to you. But for all the writers out there who say they write for themselves, my sense is they still want others to read, enjoy, and like what they write. I'll write because there are stories begging to get out of my brain. But I certainly hope those stories get read by others, and the more the better.

Two, with that in mind, it is the readers who cast the votes. When people read your book, do they come back looking for other things you've written? Do they tell their friends and family? Do you see an upsurge in people buying or downloading your book?

Note, I'm not saying if this doesn't happen that your book is bad. Nor am I saying if it does, that your book is the shining example of how to write a book. What I am saying is if you see the book getting read by readers, if they are enjoying it, then we've accomplished the main goal of writing fiction. We've entertained people. Any other sub-goal is gravy after that.

But if a book is poorly written but still sells like lemonade at a spelling bee on a hot, summer day, does that mean it is good? It may not be great prose, or could have some plot holes big enough to fly the Millennium Falcon through, but it did do one thing right: it got people to read the book. And those are the people whose votes count. If you don't get readers, whether traditionally published or otherwise, if only your best friends and family care to read it because they don't have the heart to tell you it stinks, then the book will remain in obscurity. Or, if it's that bad, you'd better hope it remains in obscurity. Because if it ever became popular reading, it may likely be for the wrong reasons.

The end result is that it doesn't matter how many rules you've broken, if you write a story that people find compelling, guess what? Readers will overlook a multitude of flaws. Yes, I know you won't. If you see an "As you know, Bob" on the first page of the book, you'll shut it in disgust and put it back on the shelf. But most readers? Nope. They don't care. Once they are invested in the characters and story emotionally, it takes a lot of transgressions of a serious nature to pull most people out.

The bottom line, write an entertaining story, and that gives you the best chance at success. It relates to the Dare to be Bad post we looked at not too many weeks ago. For sure, write the best, cleanest, fewest plot holes, etc., book you can. Weed out the typos with a passion. But in the end, that will rarely sink a book unless they are simply overbearing. A good story that will entertain people will overcome these flaws. But if it is boring, there is little chance for resuscitation.

This brings us to one last issue. For what some will fall back on is the art vs. commercial fiction. The basic idea is that if one shoots to write art as a goal, with no thought whether it will sell or not, that this is a higher and loftier goal to write for, and one should enjoy being the "starving artist." Meanwhile, author X whose book is selling like hotcakes and cranks out three to four novels a year, and thus can't possibly be writing anything but crap, has lowered him/herself to the base demands of commercialism, where the almighty dollar dictates what book will get written next, what will sell.

But I would suggest this is generally a false dichotomy. It is not an either/or in most cases. One can write fiction that is both artful and sells well. Just like an artist draws a painting to be seen. And if it sells, that is added confirmation that he/she's drawn something that captured someone's emotional reaction.

And that right there is what sells books. When we can generate an emotional attachment between the reader and our characters in what they are going through, then people are entertained and will tolerate much more crap. Everyone has their own individual breaking point on that, and none of us are the same in that category.

And that, my friends, is why the Di Vince Code sold so well. Not because of the lack of plot holes, or the preponderance of brilliant writing, nor the lack of redundancy, but because it emotionally engaged readers to the point they were willing to ignore all the flaws in its writing.

So, whose vote counts in whether your work is a "success" or not? Is it other writers? Editors at a mag or publishing house? Or readers? Or to ask it another way, what is your goal in writing that story? Whatever that goal is, if you reach it, then you've succeeded. But I'd say the only way us authors have of knowing if we're succeeding is if people enjoy our work and want more. There are awards. There is the praise of other writers and editors. But they all hinge on readers wanting to read it.

If no one is willing to read our work, then short of the goal being "I'm writing this purely for myself, and maybe, if I'm in the right mood, my wife and kids," then it means we haven't succeeded, no matter the praise we get from other writers, or we complain that the readers are a bunch of stupid lemmings being led around by the ear by marketing and executives. There's no reason to make excuses when your book isn't selling. Either it is good and in time will become the best seller it always should have been, or will simply be passable, but because you have a great plot, people buy it, or it really does suck, and we simply don't want to admit it.

And that last may be the reason so many will take the vote of what is "good" out of the reader's hands and put it somewhere that they can have more control over, like not following all the rules as well as they should have.

Just remember to keep in mind what the goal is, and don't let the violation of some rules here and there prevent you from getting that story out. Dare to be bad.

Where's your breaking point where rule violations will pull you out of wanting to read an otherwise compelling story?

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